Archive for the ‘Fan Created Set’ Category

We’re getting down to the end of the DFC previews. Today is the last day of previews for Checkmate, the last team featured in the set. Like Seventh Soldier said in his excellent team write-up Checkmate was easily the most hotly debated team in the set. Originally, we hadn’t planned to refeature Checkmate. But as the Final Crisis story unfolded, it became clear that next to Darkseid’s Elite, Checkmate was the most important team in the story.

Another problem was that Checkmate was already a force to be reckoned with in Vs. The original version of the team in the Infinite Crisis set remains one of the most playable teams in the game. Certainly one of the best DC teams left out there. So we were faced with the challenge of making a team that felt like Checkmate without making Checkmate crazy busted.

The answer was found in the story itself. In Infinite Crisis, Checkmate was quitely pulling all the strings. They were calling the shots and the DCR version of the team reflected that. In Final Crisis, Checkmate was desperate. They were on the run as safehouse after safehouse fell to Darkseid.

As a result, the new version of Checkmate has to makes some risky plays. Not only that, but they will loose one headquarters after another. Ryan Choi <> The Atom plays into both of those themes. Going down a resource (usually a location for Checkmate) is a risky proposition. Koing a resource too early or too often can easily cost you the game.

But the payoff – the card of your choice in your hand when you need it – could win you the game. It’s just of matter of knowing when the time is right to pull the trigger so you don’t shoot yourself in the foot.

Other affiliations (Brotherhood, JLI) are looking at Ryan Choi and drooling. His restriction makes him a little less splashable. But as long as you can guarantee a team-up, Ryan will be a welcome addition to any team that likes to KO its own resources.

So, that’s it for me. Thanks to the guys for letting me play along when I didn’t do much of the heavy lifting this time around. And thanks to everyone for the overwhelmingly positive response to the set so far. Believe me when I say, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

Welcome back. I hope you’ve been enjoying the DFC previews so far. Today, we’re wrapping up the Gotham Knights before moving onto one of the few new teams in the set.

Before I start talking about the card, I’ll ramble on a little bit about how the Gotham Knights got included in Final Crisis.

(Feel free to skip ahead. I’m going to ramble a lot.)

When we decided to follow up DC Universe, a Final Crisis set seemed like a natural fit. We really wanted to refeature the New Gods and it seemed like they would be prominently featured in Final Crisis. We also wanted to refeature the Shadowpact (which we did) and at the time it seemed like the Reign in Hell storyline was going to tie into Final Crisis more closely than it actually did.

As it turns out, Final Crisis turned out to be a really difficult story to get a handle on. After each issue or tie-in, we re-evaluated what we were doing. Does Legion of Three Worlds have anything to do with the main story? Where’s the New Gods? Gosh, the Checkmate seems to be awful important…

Since the New Gods were more or less no shows in Final Crisis, we were left with a bit of a problem. First, we had a hole in our roster. And second, we didn’t really have a recognizable “good guy” team. At one point or another, I think we debated the merits of just about every “good guy” affiliation in DC Comics before settling on a Gotham Knights refeature.

Eventually, the Batman RIP storyline did dovetail with Final Crisis. In some ways, it was more connected to the main story than a lot of the tie-in mini-series that wore the FC banner. But ultimately, there was something more than that.

Both stories were written by Grant Morrison. And they both had that Morrison feel. If you go back to DCU, a lot of the source material for that set was based on comic books written by Geoff Johns. If DCU was the Johns set, DFC would be the Morrison set. (You may even see a nod or two to some of Morrison’s other works in the set.)

When we decided to refeature Gotham Knights, we all agreed that they needed to have a new spin on them. In the GK previews to date, you’ve seen how we represented Batman’s ultimate preparation with the Charge keyword. But we weren’t done yet.

We kept reaching back deeper and deeper into Morrison’s Batman. And the Gotham Knights kept expanding. If you read Morrison’s Batman, you know he was planting the seeds of RIP (and Final Crisis) from his first issue. So we gradually grew to include just about the whole run.

One of the most fascinating parts of Morrison’s run on Batman was the Club of Heroes. The two-part story seemed like filler material at first. But in reality, Morrison was setting the stage for his Club of Villains.

But before I get ahead of myself, let’s take a look at the Club of Heroes. The Club (also called the Batmen of All Nations) consisted of a bunch of Batman-inspired heroes from around the globe. In Watchmen style, the club disbanded and went on to mostly undignified ends. But every now and then, the club gets back together again.

And that’s excatly what the Club of Heroes wants to do in this set. Here’s alook at what you’ll get as a pay-off for assembling the Club:

Kind of speaks for himself, right? Free stuns. Not too shabby. Is he hard to pull off? Somewhat. But the Club will have tricks that make it easier to assemble the whole gang (Think Secret Six without the alternate win condition.)

Also, if you need a little help, there’s always the Captain.

I hope you enjoyed this look at a mini-team/strategy within our Gotham Knights refeature. Come back tomorrow when things get really weird.

I thought I’d share that I just wrote my first DFC preview article. Originally, the plan was to post the article here on Monday. But instead, the preview articles should be posted on the main page of Vs.org. Be sure to check them out for the next two weeks for all the DFC goodness.

Come back here too. We’ll have all the links to the preview articles being doen by the Vs. community as they come out. Plus, you never know when the design team will stop by and provide some behind-the-scenes commentary.

Anyway, the first article is the team preview for Darkseid’s Elite. Here’s one of those behind the scenes details I was telling you about. I got my wires crossed when I was writing the article (which hapens all the time with me) so I ended up including an extra card by mistake.

DFC has been more or less done for months now, but the guys are putting on the finishing touches. This thing is going to be far more polished than any fan-made set ever. It will bury DCU, that’s for sure.

(Are you getting a little excited yet? Good.)

I know, I’ve posted “coming soon” posts before in relation to DFC. And the truth is, I always meant it. It’s been a long, slow process. But this time, I have a date.

November 1, 2009.

Count on it.

Oh and maybe check back here between now and then for a couple of hints and teases.

Been away a while. Honestly, I basically had to drop out of the fan-created card design biz. But, the rest of the creative team behind the original DCU set soldiered on to complete DFC.

I haven’t seen anything (and even if I did there’s no way I’d spoil it!) But I know how much work they’ve put into this project and I know it’s going to knock your socks off. They’ve even gone so far as to create their own promotional website. Check it out: